Sourcing Wegmans’s Success

Today’s society and economy employees are educated and well off. Motivation is fast becoming a vital instrument in organizational culture. The 34th US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, popularized the term ‘Motivation’ to describe “Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it” (Eisenhower 2016). This definition has broadened to include how vital employees' trust in their leaders; apparently, motivated employees are a valuable asset of a successful company. 

Wegmans Food Markets is a privately owned supermarket chain founded by John Wegman and Walter Wegman, in 1916 (Wegmans Company Overview 2020). Today, Wegmans carries 50,000 employees and operates 101 stores, mainly in US regions. Wegmans has appeared in the Fortune list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” spotted by 1st in 2005, 2nd in 2006, 3rd in 2009, respectively. Robert Wegman proudly stated for the result that "This is the culmination of my life's work” (McNellis 2010: 185). To date, Wegmans ranked at no. three on the Fortune 2020 list, which based on the employee satisfaction survey.  Based on the consistent results, ring the bell was Wegmans its luck? Does Wegmans have an efficient approach which the other company can apply too? After extensive study of Wegmans success’s, here is an extract of company values (2020) concluded Wegmans’s success, the company 

1. Care about the well-being and success of every person
2. Respect and listen to their people
3. Empower their people to make decisions that improve employees’ work and benefit to customers and company

As a positive correlation of above, Wegmans's principles shown that employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that bring to their jobs. Reversely, employee engagement has finally come to the forefront of the business world. To support, Mulcahy added, "Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person not just an employee is more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability” (Mulcahy 2013). Despite this, little progress has been made in the next section, exploring theoretical and analysis reviews of what makes the most to have employees’ motivation? How did Wegmans do it? 

Motivational Theory Focus 

Every company wants their employee’s best of effort, work hard, big think, be inspired. Truth is bitter; in fact, management well not clearly understand what should have done to get employee's best interest at their work or maybe even not bother. The result can know in statistically as per sale volume or employee turnover rate. For easy observation, the employer may read whether the employee written on the face with "I love my job, I trust my leader," "I am ready to rock today" or not. 

Today management requires to impose several motivational mechanisms. This blog presents the essence of motivation mechanisms and their role in the modern workplace. Among the vary of motivation theories, founds Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s motivation theory (Content Theory) is most fundamental to every level of employee/everyone indeed. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is also known as a motivational theory in psychology, comprising a five-tiler model of human needs (Maslow 1943). 

Fig 1. Maslow’s Hierarchy (Source: McLeod 2020)

Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that the most basic need for people is physical needs, which motivates our behavior. Once the bottom line achieved, keen to the next level, which motivates us till self-actualization needs. The Hierarchy of needs can briefly describe as per above Fig 1. 

Fig 2. Maslow’s Hierarchy - Business Application (Source: Frize 2020)

The same principles apply to business. The complexities of arising from individual needs in the theory while attempting in the business application, as per Fig 2, it shows how employees can be encouraged to reach the highest levels of Hierarchy, is empowering businesses to achieve excellence and financial success. Maslow’s motivation theory applies to the business application as below (Nafziger 2010). 

1. Physiological - Employee fundamental issues of survival such as salary and stable employment
2. Security - Employee expect for a stable physical and emotional environment such as benefits, pension, safe work environment, and fair work practices
3. Belongingness - Employee keen on the social acceptance issues such as friendship or cooperation on the job
4. Esteem - The positive self-image, respect and recognition issues such as job titles, nice workspaces, and prestigious job assignments 
5. Self-Actualization - It is achievement issues such as workplace autonomy, challenging work, establish envision.

Motivation Factor Affecting 

As was pointed out in the introduction to this paper, how Wegmans promotes employee motivation. Wegmans sustains employee turnover rate as low as 17% of the entire organization, whereby Walmart is closer to 40% (Nisen 2015). Low turnover directly implicated employee satisfaction in an aspect ratio of fair wages, job security, decent working environment, superior's leadership, job position, and career prosperity, etc. 

The most critical and straightforward success of Wegmans’ philosophy is ‘Employees first, Customers second" (Nayar 2011). Wegmans rely on traditional methods to attract the best workers, which is competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and robust training. Beyond that, Wegmans makes its stores' employees love to works, and customers love to shop. Trust, these are the parts of employee welfare under Wegman's leadership and blueprint.

In our seminal analysis of how employee motivation factor is affecting, Wegmans showed the proficiency stated as “People are our greatest asset" (Sengupta 2018). It is binding with Maslow’s Esteem needs, which makes their employees may feel of their persistence, earn respect and recognition. Wegmans invests time in training and lets employees participate in onboarding programs, as well as live training in the store. Wegmans are encouraging for uplifting their skills and enhance confidence levels in their work proficiency. It is promoting “caring, respect, promising prospects” to employees. All these are undeniable and complete answers to how Wegmans seemed every year in Fortune list of “Best Companies to Work For."

Recommendation

Despite the Wegmans case is comprehensive best practices for employee motivations, the author would like to contribute some recommendations here. The best employee motivation efforts will focus on what the employees deem to be necessary. It will be great if the employer can focus on these areas, which is the absolute indication that the employee decides to stay or leave the company. Such as fair pay, flexibility working hours, employee well-fare, job enlargement, reward systems, and empowerment. Moreover, open opportunity for an insider to climb the corporate ladder, job security, which can be desired based on experience and proficiency, decent leadership which can treat to subordinate fair and equal, etc.

Conclusion 

In the work goal context, the psychological factors are the most stimulating the people’s behavior can be a desire for success, money, job satisfaction, etc. Therefore, the role of a leader is vital to arouse fascination employees’ performance in their jobs harmonizing with motivation.   People often say that motivation does not last. Thus, we need it daily and energizing for every fresh day. 

Reference 

Beuhring, T. (1989) “Incorporating Employee Values in Job Evaluation”. Journal of Social Issues 45 (4), 169–189

Eisenhower, D.D. (2016) Motivation Is the Art Of… [online] available from <https://inspirecast.ca/dwight-d-eisenhower-motivation-is-the-art-of-getting-people-to-do-what-you-want-them-to-do-because-they-want-to-do-it/> [1 May 2020]

Frize, F.C. (2020) Choice Theory - An Explanation Of All Human Behavior #FrizeMedia [online] available from <http://www.internetbusinessideas-viralmarketing.com/choice-theory.html> [2 May 2020]

Maslow, A.H. (1943) “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50 (4), 370–396

McNellis, D. (2010) Reflections on Big Spring. 1st edn. United States: AuthorHouse

Mulcahy, A. (2013) Motivation [online] available from <https://storyofmulcahy.wordpress.com/motivation/> [16 April 2020]

Nafziger, J. (2010) “Motivational Job Assignments”. Economica 78 (312), 676–696

Nayar, V. (2011) “Employees First, Customers Second”. NHRD Network Journal 4 (3), 85–88

Nisen, M. (2015) Wegmans Is a Great Grocery Store Because It’s a Great Employer [online] available from <https://qz.com/404063/new-york-city-is-getting-a-great-grocery-store-in-wegmans-and-an-even-better-employer/> [1 May 2020]

Sengupta, S. (2018) “Role of Corporate Culture in Foreign Market Access”. IJTSRD 2 (5), 1420

Wegmans Company Overview (2020) available from <https://www.wegmans.com/about-us/company-overview/> [1 May 2020]